


Runaways

by BelowBedlam



Series: Verity [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dairsmuid Annulment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5476247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelowBedlam/pseuds/BelowBedlam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inquisitor Kimani speaks with her cousin Nashan, newly come to Skyhold. </p>
<p>(Directly follows The Moon In Her Mouth. Plotbunnies.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runaways

**Author's Note:**

> This is from Nashan's POV. I'm not sure how much I'll be writing in her voice, but this piece just works better in her view. Kimani's sort of flustered/excited anyway.

Nashan doesn’t expect tears, if she’s honest. Not from a woman who felled a darkspawn and still had what was left of the Breach splitting her left palm. Not from a child of a woman who refused to cry even at her nephew’s funeral, standing vigilant instead over her mourning sisters. Even Uncle Daran had cried. So Nashan doesn’t expect tears, and certainly not such quiet, gentle ones, slipping over her cousin’s cheeks onto their entwined fingers.

She doesn’t expect to hear Rivaini, either:  _My family, my family._

This is all good. Great. It’s just that Nashan knows her aunt. And her cousin, at least on first glance, is nothing like her.

After her introduction in the tavern the big qunari says something to the Inquisitor, who nods. The qunari walks off without looking back, which is quite like them, from her knowledge of the horned bastards.

It’s not like them to have Rivaini clan sigils carved into their jewelry; This, she can’t come back from, even as the Inquisitor dries her eyes and pats Nashan’s hands before letting go, rising.

“You must be tired, and hungry. Come, and spare us both the prying eyes.” Kimani pulls a fur-lined hood over her hair and beckons for Nashan to follow, which she does, casting a glance back at the burly, bearded man. He’s smiling now, where he’d been ready to pounce not twenty minutes before. Devoted man. Decent beard.

When the Inquisitor (cousin Kimani, cousin Kimani) offers her arm Nashan takes it as though she’s regularly offered arms of armor-clad mages. She’s pulled close to the Inquisitor’s side as they walk brusquely across the bustling courtyard; soldiers puffed with winter gear and show-offs fighting half-naked in the sparring arenas, Chantry sisters walking in pairs, their hooded eyes flitting to the Inquisitor as she strides past. Orlesian nobles, a Marcher noble, Ferelden nobles. Lots of common folk. A few of the people she’d traveled with on the road, gawking now as they recognize her cousin as The Inquisitor and her as the kid on The Inquisitor’s arm.

Nashan squirms under such recognition, and pulls her own hood over her hair.

“Yes, I know,” Cousin Kimani nods to Nashan, patting her arm. “When this all first started, I hid so well that only the advisers knew who I was.”

“Even with the hair, eh?” Shit. That came out too easy. But her cousin is too warm, too open. Smells too much like home to have never really been there. As it is, she only laughs as they round a corner and ascend a stone stair. Old place, this.

“Even with the hair. I got good at hiding it after the Circles fell.”

“Oh, aye? Why’s that?”

Kimani casts her a furtive glance. “I ran. I was apostate, and a white-haired, brown-skinned mage was too easy a target.”

Nashan coughs. Asha hadn’t mentioned that. “You ran after the Circles fell?”

“Well. Before. Not long before. When I finally heard of what happened at Dairsmuid Circle.”

Nashan halts in her tracks and makes a funny sound, one she doesn’t recognize in herself. Kimani jerks, unready for the sudden stop, and frowns deeply when she slips her arm from Nashan’s, taking a polite step away.

“I’m sorry…” She begins.

“You left when you heard?” Nashan remembers when it happened. She’d been in Rivain, she’d just left the Circle and her cousins, was excited at the notes and trinkets they’d loaded her with. But they’d sent her off hurriedly, as though something was wrong. Because there was.

Spirits help her, it’s been two years and the fire burns just as hot as it did then.

Kimani nods vigorously, knocking the hood from her head. The near-translucent white of her hair glitters in the sun. “Of course I did. Of  _course_  I did. My mother… I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t find her at all in the Fade, but the news spread quickly and I couldn’t stay. I tried to—I watched the small apprentice mages, you see—but something happened. And then I had to leave.” She’s flushed in the cheeks, brow furrowed as her “r’s” grow hard but her vowels slant the way back-country Marcher vowels slant.

Nashan realizes she’s wide eyed, tries to school her face back into a frown. Tries.

Kimani sighs. “You knew I was  _somniari,_  yes?”

“Yes. That’s not…I just didn’t think…”

Something frighteningly dark passes over her cousin’s face before she looks away. “I did not know my cousins. We played as children, but I did not know the men that died at Dairsmuid. They were still my family.”

Nashan swallows, suddenly nervous. This was a woman that had done impossible things. There’d be some darkness in her, no matter the seemingly sweet nature of her heart.

“I meant no disrespect, cousin.  _Elder_ cousin. It’s just…you’re more devoted than some of our kin back home.”

“It’s all I had,” Kimani shrugs. “As a child, that’s what I clung to when I was taken away. I just…never stopped clinging to it.”

“But you left and came to  _Ferelden_. You didn’t go home.”

“I was afraid,” Kimani says softly. “I had not seen my mother in twenty years. The Fade is…it is the reason we have a relationship, but it is different.  _We_  are different there. And my fear pushed me towards the docks. I knew more of Ferelden than I did Antiva, Rivain. Yet with all that’s happened, perhaps I should have gone north.” She scoffs and begins walking again. Nashan follows, finding herself back at her side in moments. The ramparts are long and cold, the guards on patrol bundled big as bears. They all stand straighter as her cousin passes.

They reach a dark wooden door. Kimani pulls a key from her pocket and opens it; a rush of incense greets them as they enter.

_Oh._

“Maybe south is better,” Nashan breathes, gawking. “This is grand shit.”

The walls of this room are gray stone but covered in tapestries of Southern Thedas and the Waking Sea and smaller art with Orlesian flair. The strongest color in the room is a deep rose that brings the Sea to full focus amongst delicate rugs and an endless heap of pillows on a bed covered in a blanket with gold sewn into it. Huge bed. She’s got a mahogany desk in the corner beneath the Sea tapestry, bordered by her fireplace on one side and a small bookshelf on the other. Snow-brightened light filters through the glass of her balcony doors. The dozen jars crammed onto her nightstand catch a lot of that light in their crystal cells, making the room glitter.

Furthermore, there are  _two_  couches.

“Yes, I like it too,” Kimani laughs, crossing the room to where her wardrobe sits next to an enormous, gilded mirror. She hangs her coat on its outer hook. “But the price is a bit steep.” She slips off her gloves, raises her left palm.

The fabled Anchor is a bright and sickly green. Nashan grunts, remembering the blight on the sky;  _That_  was in the  _palm of her hand_. “Oh.”

“Yes it hurts, though only a little since I killed the thing that gave it to me. And no, it won’t hurt you.”

“I…”

“You can come in, you know,” Kimani says gently, hands on her hips as she smiles. Her nose is still red like her eyes from crying, but it doesn’t look like she’ll start it up again. Good. Nashan takes a few steps further into the room. She hasn’t been anywhere so nice since Aunt Asha’s house, and that had felt like a prison. Though, that’d been her fault.

Aunt Asha’s voice cuts through her like a knife:  _You make it to Skyhold, you stay with your cousin. Heart-heavy child. Forget about Gala. He is gone._

“Maybe you won’t want me to.” Nashan says slowly, standing near the door. “I…want to ask you for a favor.”

Kimani brightens. “Yes, what do you need? Tell me, Nashan.”

“It is about Dairsmuid.”

“Yes?” She walks over to her desk. There’s a tea set on it of white china decorated in golden flowers. The tea still steams when she pours it into two mugs, offering one to Nashan when she comes back to the door. Nashan takes it for the warmth, sniffing at the tea. “Cousin?”

“I do not think one of our cousins died,” Nashan says. “I think he lives. And he ran. And he’s here. In Ferelden.”

Kimani doesn’t speak, sipping her tea quietly.

“That’s why  _I’m_ in Ferelden,” she goes on. “After Dairsmuid, the family broke a little. When I came to the Marches I killed a man. A Templar. Asha…your mother hid me. My mother…well, I ran. I don’t know how she found me and not Gala, but I’d ask for your help.”

“Gala is the living cousin,” Kimani says. Nashan nods. “Why do you think he’s here?”

“He told me.”

“What?”

“In a letter. It was for my aunt but I took it. It says he’s disappearing for his own safety, that Dairsmuid was something more than an annulment of mages, and that the Clan was safer with him gone.”

“And you decided to come after him anyway.”

“Yes, he owes us more than a letter. He owes his own mother more than that. And I think…” Nashan fidgets. “I saw him before the annulment. He was different. Gala was…is…I just… I just need help finding him.” She’s flustered, warm, and breathes deeply.

“Alright,” Kimani raises the marked hand, her gaze sympathetic. “It’s alright. We’ll try and find him. I’ve got a very good spymaster on my team for a few weeks longer. If there is a trail, she will find it. What happens next, we can talk about. But you need a bath, and some food, and rest. You’re shaking. Drink the tea. Do you want wine?”

Nashan watches as Kimani strides back to her desk, opening a wine glass and procuring a slender goblet.

“Wine?”

“Well, you’ve been trekking Ferelden in the midst of a war, you’ve dealt with things you probably needed something stronger than wine for.” The goblet replaces the mug in her hands before she can speak and Kimani is herding her towards her bed, pressing down on her shoulders so she sits. Then she’s off again, around a corner (there is more to this room?!) saying something about the best bath in the fortress. Nashan sips the wine, makes a face: it is blood-dark and bitter.

The Inquisitor is not. At least, not from what Nashan can see.

Nothing like her mother. But she must remember that this is the  _Inquisitor_.  Everyone knows the stories, and Nashan must remember what she is capable of. This is how Nashan’s survived, wouldn’t do to shirk that now.

After a moment, Kimani calls for Nashan. “You’ll want to see how I make the bath. Then you can do it whenever you like.”

Well. She’s certainly not saying no to a bath, not in a place like  _this_. Nashan rises to her feet, kicks back the rest of her wine, and follows.


End file.
